God tests everyone, and in Genesis twenty-two he puts Abraham on a journey to sacrifice his son Isaac. After all the struggle that Abraham and Sarah had to go through to conceive the child, God decides that the boy should be sacrificed to him. And without even a moment of procrastination or a murmur of pain (Gen 22.3) the man sets out to carry out God's command. What kind of God would ask a loyal man like Abraham to carry out such a terrible act ? I firmly believe that God did this not to deprive Abraham of the wonders of his lineage, or to have a human holocaust for his sake, but to gain our trust and show how trustworthy he is. And also to show that if we listen to what he has to say to us, we too will have everything “provided” for us when the urgent times arrive. He trusted in Adam and Eve, whose adversities began when they turned their ears away from Him and ate the forbidden fruit (Gen 3.6). Or in the story of Cain and Abel, Cain chooses not to listen to God and commits murder against his brother Abel (Gen 4:8) and is then sent to Nod. Once again, another misfortune occurred when Lot's wife ignored the Lord's commands and looked back to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, only to be turned into a pillar of salt (Gen 19:26). All these stories show how much God trusts in humanity but we either don't listen to His desires or we don't trust Him, and because of this disobedience there are severe penalties. And this trend just continues throughout the Bible. Abraham, on the other hand, has given in to his rules and does what he is told without even the slightest hesitation. He slowly ventured up the mountain, to the exact place God had shown him, and built the altar, then bound his son and prepared him for sacrifice (Gen 22:9). But at this point the Lord stopped him. Without shame, because he did as he was told, he announced "Here I am" (Gen 22:11). This is different from Adam having to hide for going against the Lord's will at the beginning of Genesis chapter three. And unlike chapter three, instead of being rebuked and punished, Abraham is blessed by the Lord (Gen 22:16-19), because he did what he was told even though it was a great loss to his family..